You do have a choice

Chapter 11, verse 26 is the beginning of a very famous passage where Moses said to the people, I'm setting before you a blessing and a curse. And that's a pretty famous sermon passage because it grabs people at the point of the necessity of making choices or decisions. But it's a conclusion really to a long section here in which Moses has prepared the people of Israel for the entrance into the promised land. He really starts this preparation for them all the way back in chapter 10, verse 12 where he starts off with this sort of a summary of the covenant. See what he's really asking for in chapter 11 is a renewal of their covenant with God. Now, the covenant was made at Sinai after he'd given them the law. And in the law, he told them what he wanted them to do. And he said to them, I will be your God and do the things that God does, guide his people, provide for their needs, protect them, and give their nation and their lives value and meaning and permanence. I'll do those things for you, but here's what I require. I require you to make a promise to me that you'll do everything I tell you to do. Because I can't promise a good outcome unless you obey what I'm telling you to do. And that's always true. You can't promise a good outcome to people unless they do the things they're supposed to do. It doesn't matter what field it's in, whether it's athletics or music or business or whatever else it is. If you don't do the things that really are required and do them right, a good outcome can't be guaranteed or determined. So he said, this is what I want to challenge you about. Here are the things you need to do. Chapter 10, verse 12. You must fear the Lord your God. You must walk in all of his ways. You must love him. You must serve him. And you must obey his commands and decrees. These promises, these requirements on their part. Here's what I ask of you. And what God means when he says, do everything I tell you to do, this is what it is. I want you to have great respect for me and my word and whatever I say. I want you to live the way I tell you to live. I want you to be connected to me. That's what the word love is about, being bonded together. I want you and I to be bonded together. I want you to see yourself as a servant to me. And I want you then to observe the things I tell you. Think about them. Reflect on them. And make these things a part of your everyday life. And then he describes all the things that are going to happen to them after that. The way this is going to affect them. If they do these things, there are consequences that are going to come to them. They should, he said, set their affection on God. They should change their heart so that they're no longer stubborn. They must elevate him to the place of the God who is a God who's never bribed or never plays favorites. He always is reliable to do exactly what he ought to do. And he then renews this. Fear God and serve God. Hold fast to him. And then he begins chapter 11 with the same kind of recital. Love God. Be bonded together with him and keep his requirements. That's where he starts. All this emphasis on these qualities. And then he says to them, now if you do this, here's what I want to promise to you. You have lived in the past in a way that didn't reflect all these things I'm asking you to do. You were stubborn people. Every time I told you what to do, you rebelled against me. So you're going to have to live contrary to your nature in the past. You're going to have to make a commitment to say, I'm going to be submissive to God instead of rebellious and stubborn in my own mind. So here's how you can do this. Remember how bad your troubles were when you weren't doing the things I've asked you to do. When you were trapped and there was no place to go at the Red Sea and I told you what to do and you did it and you were rescued. Remember how your people rebelled against me in that time whenever the leaders of Israel turned against him and there were thousands of people who died in a plague. Remember how bad those things were. And that will give you a renewed confidence to follow me. Now if you remember these things and you observe everything I've told you to do, I'm going to give you the strength to go into this land that you're facing and fight the battles you're going to have to face and win. Here's what he's saying. If you do what I tell you, I will give you strength you never had before. See that's what they're going to need to live this new life, live a different kind of life. I will give you strength greater than you've ever had before so that nothing stands in your way of victory and no problem will come in front of you that you cannot overcome. The land that I'm giving you and the life that I'm giving you is better than what you left. See this is what's hard sometimes to stop the life you used to live because you don't want to lose everything. Somebody told me one time, I don't want to become a Christian because I'm afraid I won't be happy. When you think of giving up some things that have been a part of your life like being stubborn or self-sufficient, sometimes you think, well, that's going to be, I'm going to lose a lot when I do this. Here's his promise. I promise you that the life you're going to get will be better than what you had. Okay, you had all the crops and things in Egypt and all the food to eat and all that, but you had to irrigate it and you had to make the water come. I want to give you a land where the water is just going to come out of the sky and fall on your fields. You don't have to work that hard. You'll have everything you had before, but less work. I'll give you more than what you're giving up. If you don't believe that, it's going to be very difficult to make a commitment to follow God because you have to do some things you don't want to do. Deny yourself, take up your cross, that is pay the price to follow God, but I'll make sure that you'll have those. And if you beg exactly what I've asked you to do, I'll send the rain in the right time, the crops will grow as they ought to, but you be careful because whenever the good times come, you're going to be tempted to not pay attention to me. You're going to get used to the good times and you're going to start coasting, doing what you want to do, doing what you like to do, and your faithfulness to me will diminish. So here's my plan for you. I want you to remember the laws and decrees I've given you, and here's how you do it. You read them over and over and over again. Make a box and tie them on your wrist when you go to pray so it's right there. Put a box around your forehead so when you go to prayer, scriptures that are important to you will be in that box and remind you. In other words, make your mind saturated with the scriptures continually. Remember that, and when you put them in your life like that, then they're constantly with you. Now, when you have children, I want you to talk about the commandments I've given you and the instructions about how to live your life with your kids when you're walking down the road, with your family when you're sitting around talking, when you're playing games. When the opportunity comes up for you to explain why you live the way you live, why you do the things you do, make sure you tell them to your children. See, that's how you keep from being enticed. Keep continually reminding yourself of God's plan for your life, His instructions that lead to this good life. If you forget the instructions and you don't live it, then you will not find it. So be careful to do everything that I told you. Now all of this is leading up to verse 26. See, I'm setting before you today a blessing and a curse. You have a choice, and your choice is made every single day by the decisions you make. You see, what he talked about in the past, all this stuff before, you are making your future with every choice that you make every day. Choosing to read the Bible or not reading it. Choosing to ask God's direction or not asking His direction. Being stubborn in your own mind, being focused on yourself, or being focused on God. Every day of your life, you are building your future. You're building your future by the decisions you make, and the reason is that all the decisions that you make either bring blessings to your life or curses to your life. You don't always know whether it's going to be a blessing or a curse when you make the decision. In fact, most of the time, even when we make bad decisions, we hope that there's going to be something good come from them. Have you ever sat down with a decision you had to make and said, hmm, I'd like to make the worst decision possible out of this? Nobody does. But can't you remember some times when you had really bad results from decisions you made, but you made the best ones you knew how to make? Every day, by the decisions we make, we're building our future. Forget you get up tomorrow and you say, I don't have time to read the Bible, because I have to make a choice between breakfast or the Bible. So I've got to eat my breakfast so I'll have good strength. You make a choice. Did you get up early enough? No. Between sleeping and getting up early enough to read the Bible. You make a choice, you see, when you have a decision to make and you don't take a few minutes just in your own mind to say, God, what do you think I should do about this? You just make it because you think you have that all wrapped up in your own mind. You know what's best. You see, every time we do anything, we make decisions that shape our future, either for good things or for bad things. So Moses said to the people, he told them all these things, I'll tell you what God's going to do for you. But you are only going to experience these things if you focus on making sure that you make the decisions that are correct and right. How do you know what's right? Well, you start with the Bible. There are just some very clear, plain things that God tells us we should do. That's why he said, hide these things in your mind and your heart, and you don't make any decision that is contrary to any passage of Scripture in the Bible. Now we know some easy ones, you know. You know you're not supposed to murder anybody, so that one's pretty clear. But there's others that are sort of on the borderline. We need now not only the knowledge of Scripture, but we need the knowledge that the Holy Spirit is guiding us. And you need experience in learning to listen to God talking to you. Sometimes it's very difficult to tell the difference between your own desires and the voice of God. Now you can tell the difference between those by the way the decision works out, but we would like to know, before we get into the bad situations, which ones we should make. So you look at the Bible. What does the Bible say about this? What should your purpose be? First of all, I want to do, first, God, what you want me to do. You start there always. And you take the Scriptures that you have, he said, make sure they saturate your mind so you know what it is and you know what he wants you to do. And you always live within that framework. And you'll be tempted to compromise on things that do not seem important to you. You know why they don't seem important to you? Because they're not bad. You know, it's one thing to say, well, I'm low on money, so maybe I should go rob a bank and not have some money. And you say, well, I know that that was bad. I would never choose that one. But you might choose to say, well, you know, I'm running low on money, and I promised God I was going to give this money to this offering, but I'm low on money, so I'm not going to keep that promise. It doesn't seem evil or wicked. Just like a good business decision. But you see, you have done something the Bible says you shouldn't do. You've made a promise to God you're not going to keep. It doesn't seem big, after all, you know, nothing's going to happen, the building's not going to collapse, mission work's not going to go undone. It's my little bitty piece of money. But see, there's a big, big thing here. I did not keep my promise to God. There is nothing bigger than that. So you have to learn how to be able to live within the structures that God gives you. And I'm placing before you a blessing and a curse. What he says by that is your future is in your control. You control your future. It's not simply a matter of your past controlling you. It's not a matter of the other people around you controlling you. You control your future. You can make a choice as to the way you want to live. You can go into this promised land, and you can ignore me, and I'll guarantee you that before long, your lives will be so bad, I'll be driving you out of that land of promise. You can make choices ignoring God, but pretty soon, you'll find yourself in a place where you've made so many decisions and choices that you can't imagine any good thing ever coming out of all the circumstances that you find yourself in. Or you can make the choices God wants you to make, and you'd experience the blessings that he said he would give to you. Nothing will stand in your way. No one will be able to keep you from the things of life that God promises you. His guidance, his provision, his protection, and a life that you're proud of because it has meaning and purpose and value. God will give you those things, and it doesn't matter how bad the circumstances are that you find yourself in. Those promises are guaranteed for you. He guarantees them for all of us children. Because there's nothing bigger than God. If you give your life to him and you start doing what he tells you to do, blessings will come. Have you earned them? No. It's because you're faithful in living by the principles God wants you to live by. You trusted him enough to say, I believe the things you tell me are true. That's what faith is. I trust you. So I'm giving you today, setting before you a blessing and a curse. The blessing, if you obey the commands of the Lord your God that I'm giving you today. The curse, if you disobey the commands of the Lord your God and turn away from what I command you today by following other gods which you have known, which you have not known. Now see, we read this and we think, well, I'm safe on that one because I'm not going to follow any other gods. I'm not going to become a Hindu or a Buddhist or put a little statue in my backyard and go down and put my breakfast in front of it or anything like that. See our big danger here is not worshipping a statue but worshipping ourselves. You know how you worship yourself? You do whatever you want to do. Even if it conflicts with what He says you should do. You see, you worship whatever God you worship you obey. And if you worship God, the God of the Bible, then you learn to live your life according to the standards He gives to you. If you live your life doing what is comfortable for you, what you enjoy, what seems good to you, what's fun for you, then you worship yourself. Because the first commandment is you're to have no other gods before me. What that means is there's nothing in this world to control your lifestyle and your behavior except me. And if God is not controlling your lifestyle and behavior then you are controlling it yourself. You are deciding if you're going to come to church. You are deciding if you're going to sing the songs. You are deciding if you're going to read the Bible. You are deciding what you're going to do. And your choice is based on what you think is right rather than what God says He wants you to do. The biggest God that we worship is our own nature because it drives us. We do what it tells us we want. We feed its hunger. We feed its satisfaction. We feed its contentment. And when it's discontent, we take care of it. When it's unsatisfied, we fulfill it. When it's hungry, we feed it. We're our God. And when we do that, we make ourselves a rival to Him. See, that's our big danger. So He says, make sure when you enter this land that you do not follow these other gods which you have not known. What He means by that is when you follow your own leading, you don't know where it's going to lead you. It's not reliable. Think of how many times you've been wrong. Why would you want to follow someone who's wrong so much of the time? Here's a person who's never wrong. Why wouldn't you want to follow that advice and direction? Just makes no sense. Stupidest thing in the world. And yet we're a room full of people who've done it all the time. Every one of us have done this. This is His warning. And we've all been to the place where we're ashamed of it and sorry for it. When the Lord your God has brought you into the land you're entering to possess, you are to proclaim on Mount Gerizim the blessings and on Mount Ebal the curses. And what they were to do, where they'd come in the Promised Land and there were two great mountains on either side of this valley. And one of them was a mountain that was covered with vegetation and the other one was one of those mountains where there was nothing that grew on it, kind of like a rocky place. And you're to stand in this valley when you get in the Promised Land and you're to make a public declaration of what I want you to do. You're to read as you get there the blessings and the curses that I promised you. As you've known, these mountains are across the Jordan west of the road toward the setting sun near the great trees of Mora in the territory of the Canaanites living in the Ereba in the vicinity of Gilgal. You're about to cross the Jordan to enter and take possession of the land the Lord your God has given you. When you have taken it over and are living there, be sure you obey all the decrees and laws I'm setting before you today. What he asked them to do was to make a time when the whole nation of Israel came between these two mountains and they made their promises, and they were to recite. This is later in chapter 27 of Deuteronomy, he's going to give this list of it. They were to recite. They were to divide into two groups. One's to go on one side and they were to say, God will bless us and give us prosperity in our land if we follow him and the people will say, Amen, we'll follow God. On the other side he would say, if we don't follow God, God is going to bring curses on us and our land. And people were to say, may those curses fall on us if we disobey God. So they chanted back and forth in reciprocal ways saying, here are the blessings of God and the people would say, we will do everything God tells us. Here are the curses that come if we disobey and the people were to say, may every one of those things happen to us if we disobey. It's what we would call a public declaration of their commitment to follow God. And they make a difference, not only to say the positive side of it, but they say, and God, if we don't do these things, may all the bad things you promised happen to us. We will accept them and we know we have earned them. The reason he asked them to do this was what he said here. I want you to go in there and publicly announce the blessings and then say, we will do everything God tells us because this is the blessings that will come. And then I want you to announce the curses that will come if you disobey me and you are to say, may all of that happen to me if I turn my back on you. The reason he asked this was, I want you to understand that all the blessings come because of faithfulness and all the curses come because you have asked for them. Now, that's pretty tough language. You've asked for them. How did you ask for them? Because I told you, if you didn't do these things, that these curses would fall on you and you said, okay, God, may those curses come to me if I do not do what you tell me. One of them was arrogance. God, if we're arrogant, he said, these are things that are going to happen to you. We promised you, God, we weren't going to be arrogant. Now we've been arrogant and we ask for this. You see, you shape your future. You shape your future by what you promise God and whether or not you keep that promise. So what do you want from your life? Good life. The blessings that come from someone who's obedient, that is, every problem that comes in front of you, God gives you victory over it. He gives you strength to live the way you ought to live. He develops relationships in your life the way they ought to be. He gives you the contentment and satisfaction of life. Then make choices that lead to that. Obey God. Do you want trouble? Do you want conflict? You want pain? You want the shortage of money? You want the fear of things happening to you around you that come from someone that has no protection? You want your life to feel worthless? Then make the choices that lead there. It's up to you. I don't believe that God has determined your life from here on out. Some people do believe that. Before you were ever born, God made a plan as to what you were going to be like. I don't think that's true. This passage doesn't teach that. It teaches that you have responsibility for your own life. So what do you want? Make up your mind as to what you want, and then here's the way you get it. Listen to God. Do what he tells you, and you'll have the good life. Ignore God, and you're just in for a barrel of trouble. Let's pray. So Father, we've heard what you had to say. We stand here before you to choose, every one of us. We're going to choose what we do tonight, and we're going to choose what we do tomorrow, and every day. If we choose those things that are what you told us to do, we really believe you will bring life in all of its fullness. If we choose to worship ourselves, indulge our own natures in doing what we want to do and what seems right at the moment and fun at the moment, then the curses will come. Help us to believe that enough that every day we're careful with the choices we make. You asked the people of Israel to publicly declare whose side they were on, and so I ask, Father, for us too. If there are people here who have never publicly stood openly before others and said, I give my life to Christ, I plan to live my life in obedience to him and claim this good life, I want to ask that you would help them to understand how important that is to you, to know that they've openly made this stand as to whose side they're on. I ask, Father, day by day, that you'd give us wisdom to make the choices that you ask us to make correctly. In the name of Christ, I ask this, amen.